Can Diddy Save Music Television?

That's what he intends to do. And, he tells us, he bets you want to be in on the party.

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Somewhere in California, Sean "Diddy" Combs is up a little late making videos and making plans, promising to satisfy the hunger of a generation starved for a music brand that gets them. He's not alone. There's a whole lot of people who know the feeling of staying up later than they should, getting lost in music forums, trolling through SoundCloud, or saying "yes" to another algorithmically recommended YouTube video.

But no more. Diddy thinks he's created a network that is super-cool, super-connected, that will, much like early MTV, speak for its generation while also stewarding the future of music.

It launches today.

Revolt TV is a network dedicated to playing, breaking, and spotlighting music 24/7. But where others brands have lost the plot, Revolt is swearing off distractions: Every tweet, every piece of news, or hacked-together video will be to serve a passionate music community that didn't know how badly they wanted Revolt. "In order to be honest to this generation, and to be on television in an increasingly on-demand world, it was incredibly important that we work live at the speed of social media," says Andy Schuon, former executive VP of programming and production at MTV, now president of Revolt. This means that, even before its official launch, Revolt had accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube pushing music recommendations. It's like a hyperactive, humblebragging friend. And that friend is Diddy.

Seven years ago, Diddy started building the plan that would create Revolt TV. But he didn't have the personnel or the opportunity. In those seven years, Diddy launched a luxury vodka called Ciroc, sold a top-selling fragrance, ran Bad Boy Entertainment, and grew his Sean John clothing empire. His net worth now puts him above Jay-Z, making Diddy Forbes's Wealthiest Hip-Hop Artist. The title's well-earned: Diddy saw his business opportunity in 2011 when Comcast, as part of its partial acquisition of NBCUniversal, committed to carrying a number of minority-owned networks.

Diddy and his team won a proposal to create a channel, automatically putting Revolt in 20 to 30 million households. To make that happen, Diddy hired former execs from MTV, Vibe, ESPN, E!, and Comedy Central (also owned by MTV's parent company, Viacom).

"Why, when Justin Timberlake or the Arctic Monkeys or Vampire Weekend is at the Garden, why doesn't it feel like a prize fight?" Diddy told us in a recent interview about Revolt, his voice rising. "For music fans, it's that serious, you know?" The channel has been leaking promo videos featuring Diddy and posting a steady flow of name-drop-worthy artist interviews and backstage exclusives. Who wouldn't want to be in on that party?

Diddy is a great hype man, especially when he's hyping himself. But MTV already tried to make a music channel. When MTV first launched in 1981, it was one of the only places young Americans could be exposed to music videos. Now, it is a kraken-like media company that has, for better or for worse, pushed its music coverage online. From 1995 to 2000, MTV drastically cut the amount of videos it played on air. "It's very easy to trace a line from The Real World to Snooki," Rob Tannenbaum, co-author of I Want My MTV, told NPR in 2011. "It's an alcoholic, crooked line all the way there, but MTV quickly realized and learned that narrative television, even reality TV, rated better than music videos." It didn't help that digital platforms like Napster and YouTube were drawing its demographic away from TV and toward the Internet where music was free and always available and the offerings were exponentially more diverse.

There's a reason MTV stopped playing music. It wasn't working. So why is Revolt wading back in, especially when there are successful brands like Vice that are already reaching a music-literate digital audience? First, this generation may not remember when MTV was about music. "I was talking to someone who's 18 years old in our building," says Schuon, "and I was making a comparison to TRL [Total Request Live] and she said, 'I don't even know what that is,' and I thought, you know, Wow. You're right, that show went away five years ago." That's messed up, right? "Yeah," Schuon says, "but when you do the math, it makes sense."

The real music success stories have figured out how to find money in online music. Apple put the right price on singles by turning the whole process of buying and collecting music digital. Even their iconic iPod became digitized and subsumed by every generation of iPhone. Spotify was able to make music "free," or rather "free enough" to steal listeners away from Pandora, the original streaming-music success story.

But Revolt isn't trying to buck that trend. That would be like invading Russia in February. Instead, Revolt is banking on three things: one, that music needs a singular home; two, that home is a digitally-minded television station; and three, that there is some better alchemy to combining the web and TV.

MTV tried adding Twitter campaigns and call-in votes back in its TRL heyday and The Voice on NBC found success by adding a strong (and pervasive) social-media component. Revolt, however, wants to be more. "This generation is the hungriest and the most searching," Diddy says. "Everything is a search, there's the most searching for information, so do you think they're going to be impressed if they're hearing [on television] what's on their radio station?"

Revolt has put out global "casting calls," asking anyone and everyone to submit stories, videos, tips, links, designs, and what have you. Revolt wants to curate the best of its audience as a unifying platform for a Millennial voice. Others have seen the strategy as exploitative. Revolt, like the Huffington Post, will provide a cool platform if you do the work for it. (Current TV also tried this when, in 2005, it solicited content submissions from the public.)

But if you're Revolt, how else do you get a window into your audience? It's hard to curate the voice of a generation if that generation isn't willing to talk to you. "We live or die with this audience, so the last thing we want to do is take advantage of them," says Keith Clinkscales, CEO of Revolt. "Believe me, these young kids are smart enough to defend themselves. There will be no taking from them."

Artists will also have special access to a special portal in Revolt's forthcoming app. As with a syndicated tweet, musicians will be able to post directly into Revolt's live feed. "When I was a disc jockey, we'd give artists our hotline number," says Schuon. "So we're sort of going to do the same thing in 2013 and 2014 by basically saying, 'Here's a direct line into the studio.' Artists today love to get a million plays on YouTube, they love to have a story written about them in Vice, or whatever, it's great to have all those plays on Vevo, but they still aspire to get on television."

If that sounds nuts, it's because it kind of is. Which is good. It's difficult for companies — especially new ones with lots on the line — to admit they might not have their act together. On the other hand: "The first couple months of Revolt are going to be pretty fucked up" quoth Diddy.

When I mention that line to him, Diddy doubles down, telling me a fucked-up start is a statement of purpose: "We're going to be raw, we're going to be unpolished... We're going to be a little bit trainwreck TV. There are going to be some mistakes, there are going to be some people bumping into hosts with the camera." There is authenticity in admitting inability, but it is also a lesson pulled from the MTV playbook. ("If there wasn't MTV, I wouldn't even be here," Diddy says. "They gave me my first chance to create top number-one shows in five years. They gave me the chance to produce content.")

For all their high-minded rhetoric, Diddy and the team at Revolt are aggressively opportunistic on our behalf. They aren't yelling into a megaphone; they are shoving it into your hands and telling you to shout.

Part of that mentality is a six-month campaign started October 21 called the "Road to Revolt," a city-to-city, country-to-country grassroots campaign to get the word out about Revolt. A team of "revolters" will literally be going door-to-door to get feedback and spread the good word about the music revolution: "Music is the most powerful form of communication in the world," Diddy says. "We have different languages, we have different religions, we have different beliefs, but when we have a hit record, we all sing in unison." It's another lesson cribbed from an old playbook, this time from Diddy's own "Vote or Die" political activism campaign around the 2008 presidential election. But this time, the focus is all music.

As much as this generation of young folks likes their independence, their personalized media diet, and their ability to curate culture experiences both online and off, they also want cool brands with a social mission (think of the Warby Parkers of the world). Revolt doesn't want to be MTV, but it is trying to be what MTV was: the voice of its generation. The difference is that music culture has already exploded into fragments, pushed into the corners of the Internet and to power players like streaming radio, Apple, and a selection of publications that, yes, include Vice and MTV.

Revolt wants to be a music network to beat all other music networks, but it also wants to give back in its own way, by creating a space where music can redefine its voice generation after generation. "I have a lot of maturing to do, but nah," Diddy says, "I'm going to get cooler and cooler, baby. I'm not going to let you down. I'm black Sinatra. I'm not going nowhere yet. But yes, my position [in the music industry] has changed. I'm trying to pass the baton to the future."